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If extrinsic badness is simply whatever causally produces... — Carmelics

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Challenges→Something that is not intrinsically bad for a person may nevertheless be extrinsically bad for her.

If extrinsic badness is simply whatever causally produces intrinsic harm, then virtually any event becomes extrinsically bad for someone, rendering the category explanatorily vacuous.

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Reasons For

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Reason for

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1.Nearly every event has some causal chain leading to harm for someone, making the concept too permissive to distinguish genuinely bad things.
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2.If extrinsic badness loses discriminatory power, it cannot meaningfully explain why we treat some events as worse than others morally.
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3.A category that applies to virtually everything fails its primary function of highlighting morally significant distinctions.
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Reasons Against

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Reason against

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1.Causality requires sufficient proximity and directness; remote or speculative harms don't count, preserving meaningful boundaries.
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2.Even if extrinsic badness is widespread, it remains explanatorily useful by identifying which events have genuine causal responsibility for harm.
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3.Many legitimate concepts apply broadly yet retain explanatory value—'caused by natural forces' applies to most events but meaningfully distinguishes them.
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Key Terms

Explanatorily vacuous(as used in philosophical critique): A claim that doesn't actually explain anything useful because it lacks real substance or relies on circular reasoning.
Extrinsic badness(in ethics and value theory): Something that is bad not because of what it is in itself, but because of what it causes or leads to—like how a rainy day isn't bad in itself, but it's bad because it ruins your picnic.
Intrinsic harm(in ethics and value theory): Damage or suffering that is bad directly and in itself, not because of its side effects—like physical pain or loss of freedom.
causally produces(describing how one thing creates another): Means something directly causes or brings about something else—in this case, the mental seeds are the reason we have the experiences we do.

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Afterlife & Death1 linked

Related

A category that applies to virtually everything fails its primary function of hi...Causality requires sufficient proximity and directness; remote or speculative ha...Even if extrinsic badness is widespread, it remains explanatorily useful by iden...If extrinsic badness loses discriminatory power, it cannot meaningfully explain ...

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Many legitimate concepts apply broadly yet retain explanatory value—'caused by n...Nearly every event has some causal chain leading to harm for someone, making the...

Details

Type: claim
Perspectives: 2 (1 for, 1 against)
Edits: 1 edit

Something that is not intrinsically bad for a person may nevertheless be extrins...